BTS: Daredevil: Born Again

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The Hell’s Kitchen of Disney’s masked vigilante reboot is given a grungy seventies overhaul by lead cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera.

The hallmark of Marvel Studio’s Daredevil TV show which ran for three seasons on Netflix was the emphasis on a crime fighting superhero who actually bled and hurt. The reboot streaming on Disney+ is even grittier, doubling down on the use of real locations, in-camera effects, and cinematography styled on seedy seventies New York.

“I don't come from like a Marvel comic book movie background but I felt that my experience and my identity as a cinematographer could bring something to a story which is really about people in very other worldly situations,” says Hillary Fyfe Spera, the lead DP who shot the pilot, finale, and a total of 7 out of 9 episodes.

“I'm a very analogue DP in general and it’s important to me to get as much as we could in-camera. I felt like the style of the show should be very analogue and that the camera should feel very tied to the action rather than to big VFX.”

Daredevil: Born Again picks up where Netflix Daredevil left off with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer with heightened abilities, fighting for justice through his law firm, while former mob boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) moves to become mayor of New York. When their past identities begin to emerge, both men find themselves on an inevitable collision course. 

Bullseye in one shot

The Netflix show became renowned for a number of fight scenes shot as a ‘oner’, notably an 11 minute sequence in Season 3 episode #4 ‘Blindsided’ where Murdock battles his way out of a maximum security prison. The show’s creators throwback to this in the pilot by staging their own ‘oner’ set in a bar as Daredevil attempts to capture the villain Bullseye.

“We shot the bar sections on location and as one camera move,” explains Fyfe Spera. “There's lighting cues and practical effects and choreography all timed and very well-rehearsed working with second unit director and stunt coordinator Philip Silvera. The shot continues into the stairwell all on location in the same bar as a camera operator walks backwards up the stairs.  When we get to the roof, that’s the stitch. We shot the roof scene on stage. The next stitch happens when the camera tilts down onto the street, which was a plate of the practical bar and practical street. The timing of all of this was a challenge as was making sure it all felt like it was part of the same language.”

Gritty and vintage look and feel

For the overall look of the show, Fyfe Spera was inspired by ‘70s classics like Taxi Driver and The French Connection to create a gritty and grounded image of Hell’s Kitchen. Another go-to look reference was New York street photographer Saul Leiter who shot his greatest work in the 1950s and 60s. 

To achieve this, she shot Alexa 35 with anamorphic to create more cinematic visuals while opting for Panavision G series vintage lenses’ and incorporating flares to make the image a little imperfect and naturalistic.  

“From the initial first read of the scripts it just felt to me like it would really lend itself to being 2.39 shooting with anamorphic lenses. There's something very present about them. I liked the relationship we were able to have with characters in the frame juxtaposed with wider cityscapes. It enabled us to show characters in close-up but in a wide shot to show their feeling of separation from their surroundings.”

She also used anamorphic zooms of the type that was frequently used in 1970s movies. Aside from The French Connection she reviewed another Gene Hackman thriller of the period, The Conversation (1974) and paranoia thriller stablemate Klute (1971) lensed by Gordon Willis. Boston-set 1973 gangster film The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Michael Mann’s Thief (1981) were other choices as was the more obscure 1983 film Variety about a woman obsessed with pornography.

“It depicts a certain specific era of New York when Times Square was a lot seedier,” says the DP who has lived in the city for over 20 years. “I was trying to bring in that texture.”

Translating sensory moments

To convey Murdock’s acute sense of hearing and sixth sense she employs two different approaches, both mostly achieved in camera. One was the use of a close focus anamorphic lens that was able to be “very present” to Murdoch as he is senses something. “The lens also lent itself to a bit of flare as the camera moves around his head so we combine aspects of the world and the sensory experience.” 

For bigger sensory moments she used a combination of dolly move with a spherical zoom and an aspect ratio change (this was done in post). “We mounted two cameras on the same dolly to capture a 270-degree field of view both with wide angle Primes. In post, we combined those images to give us this feeling that he's observing and sensing the whole world, like tuning a radio dial into the one specific thing that he's pinpointing. It's a fun way of translating an audio or non-visual experience in a visual way.” 

Her favourite scene in episode one is when Fisk and Murdock are in a diner having an extended conversation and for which Heat (the De Niro / Pacino diner scene) was a huge reference. You learn a lot about their characters and the way that the series is going to pan out as they explore the limits of their relationship. 

“I kept the coverage very simple, letting the performances speak for themselves. The exciting thing about that scene from a story perspective is that these two guys who are bigger than life are just meeting in the diner, being human beings, while New York street life is happening right outside the window. It's obviously a practical location. People do come up to the window, that happens naturally with real New Yorkers, and I just felt like that was as real as it gets. Sometimes my job is letting it play and not messing with it too much. It’s as exciting to me as any action scene.”

The power of reflection and light

She also established how each character was shot by using wide lower angles when shooting Fisk to make him appear larger.  

The show is staged in a number of locations, real and studio built, much of it featuring glass, mirrors and reflections on New York streets. She maintained a naturalistic lighting approach throughout while including signature keyframes from the comic books such as giving a Fisk a halo of white light. This happened by accident when they came to shoot the diner scene. She incorporates more white light around him as the story progresses and he goes back to his old ways.

“We do a lot of interactive lighting on the show and we’re always studying the way light hits cars passing by or the way we feel traffic moving. I need to shout out to our incredible gaffer Charlie Grubbs who did an amazing job of letting the light ricochet around this chrome diner. In a bright daylight scene like this we’re open to embracing those anomalies.”

Production design, led by Michael Shaw, built mirrors and glass into sets and used reflective materials to outfit locations. “I love having a plan going into a location shoot but I always keep one eye open to the anomaly that will occur naturally.

“Reflections are a theme of the show. This duality of personalities and identities. We were always looking for an opportunity to use reflective surfaces.” 

Segments in the show framed as vox-pop news reels were shot with spherical lenses to give a different tone and style. “We called it the ‘Shadow Unit’ because it’s about the real New York is hiding plain sight. The filmmakers producing that are doc filmmakers who I have worked with in the past.”

Her first love was still photography. “I was always with a camera as a kid and that developed when I went to college when I discovered cinematography. I didn’t go to film school. I learnt by shooting everything I could possibly get my hands on. The answer is always ‘yes’ and I think that taught me how to react in different environments and how to always find a way to tell the story visually.”

Fyfe Spera has a number of documentaries on her CV including Alice Neel; The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers as well as narrative shows like Strangers and Dexter: New Blood.

Of a Marvel production she says, “It’s something I hadn't done before and I'm proud of those human moments that we have and that we also earn the more comic book moments that we all want to see. I feel like they're all in the same conversation.”